Anyone in the Mood for $440 Worth of Free Travel? [Limited Time Offer]

The Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard is offering 40,000 bonus ‘miles’ if you make $3,000 worth of purchases in the first 90 days after opening your account. The terms and conditions state, “This card offer is available only to first-time cardmembers and is valid for a limited time.”

This is a limited time offer. Your 40,000 miles are worth $400 if you redeem them for travel. (If you redeem the miles for cash back, it is only worth $200).

However, the Barclay Arrival World MasterCard offers an additional 10% miles back when you redeem miles for travel.

Here’s how the math looks.

Book a $400 flight and use 40,000 miles. Get 4,000 miles back, and your trip only ended up costing 36,000 miles.

That means 40,000 miles translates into $440 worth of free flights.

Though these are called ‘miles’, they cannot be transfer to any airline mileage program.

Why will Help Me Travel Cheap readers like this card?

The most common frustration I hear from folks is that the flights aren’t available on the day they want to buy travel. However, with this card, you book your flights from your favorite travel website or travel agent. You’ll still get all the miles and benefits of a full fare ticket, but you’ll be able to get that ticket price covered by your miles. If you can book it with cash, you can book it with your Arrival World MasterCard miles.

Earn 2x on all purchases.

This is a great bonus if you like to purchase cheap domestic flights. Obviously, if you prefer to fly first or business class, you don’t want a form of cash back, rather true miles or points instead. However, if you use your points for flights, it’s equivalent to earning 2.2% back on all your purchases. If you plan to use your points as cash back, this card isn’t as great for earning points.

How Points Redemptions Work

Purchase your qualifying travel (see below) with your Barclay Arrival World MasterCard. The minimum travel redemption is 2,500 miles. (Your travel purchase must be at least $25). You must have enough points to cover the entire purchase price. If you’re buying tickets that are $450, you would need 45,000 miles to cover that expense. If you don’t have enough points to cover the entire purchase, you won’t be able to apply any of your points. There could be some hassles trying to use your points when your mileage balance drops. Within 90 days, request reimbursement for your miles, and you should get your mileage reimbursement within 1-2 weeks. Remember, your travel must show up on the credit card charge as an eligible travel expense. Fishing 4 Deals posted that her Priceline and parking charges have not been showing up as ‘travel’ charges on the credit card statement.

Here’s how Barclay card determines if a purchase is travel:

A travel purchase and redemption is defined as: Airlines, Travel Agencies & Tour Operators, Hotels, Motels & Resorts, Cruise Lines, Passenger Railways and Car Rental Agencies as defined by the merchant category code. Purchases made at merchants that do not process transactions under these terms or that use incorrect MasterCard merchant category codes will not qualify. Barclaycard is not responsible for incorrectly coded purchases.

Other Benefits:

No caps on earning or redeeming miles.

No foreign currency transaction fees.

Get a free TripIt Pro subscription ($49 value).

The annual fee for this card is $89, but you get the first year free.

Remember, you’ll lose half the value of these points if you redeem these points as cash back, so I highly recommend only applying for this card if you want to use the points towards travel. As an example, your 40,000 miles could get you $200 cash back or $440 worth of flights.

My Plan:

I’m definitely adding this card to my next credit card churn. It’s nice to have an appealing Barclaycard option for the next batch of credit card applications. If I can convince my wife to get one too, we’ll probably end up with two of these cards. If ….

About Craig Ford

Craig is an airlines point junkie and cheap travel addict. He believes that travel can be affordable to anyone (yes, you can travel cheap and travel comfortably too). He collects hundreds of thousands of air miles each year and will talk about great travel deals to anyone who is willing to listen.

Comments

Lynn,
I haven’t been given a time frame, but they usually give a few days warning before pulling an offer. Usually, but not always. I actually didn’t want to miss the offer so I already went ahead and signed up for the card.

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